Reviews & Recommendations
Powerful tools in psychotherapy
The Imagery Toolbox is a treasure chest full of jewels, a celebration of Life in its entirety dedicated especially for those facing cancer, chronic diseases or crises. Based on the principles of Psychosynthesis, it’s the result of a long-term non-profit project created by Jan Taal, trainer-director of the School for Imagery in Amsterdam, author and health care Psychologist.
The aim of the project is to enable the imagination to become part of mainstream healthcare, so that these tools are offered to patients on a regular base.
The author of the Course Book in the toolbox states that the healthcare system is too much obsessed with protocols, medical technology, rapidly finding diagnoses and treating symptoms, and that there is an urgent need to pay much more attention to the existential, spiritual essence of life, which often turns out to be of utmost importance for patients.
The Imagery Toolbox contains 54 evocative symbol-cards, many of which are wonderful photos of the author himself, audio imagery exercises such as “Imagery of the good place”, “The source”, “Pain relief”..), drawing, writing and modeling material, “Singing for your life” (a very touching and joyful documentary), and a comprehensive Course Book.
People who are confronted with cancer, chronic disease and crisis come to the shocking and potentially revealing experience that they are not so safe, in control and invincible as they once believed themselves to be. Their fundamental feelings of security are threatened, and this loss causes shock, pain, grief, helplessness, fear and anger. And so the imagery and the artistic expression enable them to rediscover and vitally renew themselves; offers them a powerful source of inspiration, healing and inner freedom. Humans possess an innate self-reinforcing capacity, a healing potential that works on imagination. Assagioli, the founder of Psychosynthesis, states that every image has in itself a motor-drive that tend to produce the physical conditions and the external acts corresponding to them. The most recent discoveries in the field of neuroscience are confirming this fundamental hypothesis.
Finally, I want to thank Jan Taal very much for his long and great work. The material contained in this treasure chest also stimulates the creativity of the therapist himself and invites him to invent always new ways of using it! Personally I have used the Imagery Toolbox in my psychotherapeutic practice, even with people not suffering from cancer and other chronic diseases. I found the stimuli always really interesting because imagination and artistic work are powerful tools for each of us!
